Columbus and the Valley

Eight Months

metal and wood figureThese past eight months have been like heaven on earth. Eight months without vomiting. Eight months without diarrhea. Eight months of razor-sharp taste buds. Eight months of date nights with Jill. Eight months of normalcy. Eight months of cancer on the back burner. Eight months without taking a medication that costs $10,000 per month. Eight months of sunshine without being afraid of burning my skin. Eight months of the occasional taste of beer. Or wine. Or bourbon. Eight months of being able to tell people I’m doing well and eight months to thank them for their continued love and concern. Eight months of being able to work, think and contribute to our publishing company.

July 23 was the day we had a follow up appointment with Dr. Pippas to get the results of the CT scan we had the day before. What had looked like another good, stable scan took a screaming left turn when Dr. P’s eyes took in the slice that showed my left adrenal gland. We both saw the lump at the same time.

Three years ago, a discovery like this would have set me on my ear.  But, these last three years have turned me into a tough sonofabitch. Yeah, I got a lump in my throat about the same size as that tumor. Yes, I could feel the dampness in the pits of my arms. Even before I knew what needed to happen next, I knew that when cancer’s in the house, ain’t nothing good comin’ from it.

Then Dr. Pippas did what he does best. He pushed back in his chair and we talked. With a waiting room full of patients, we talked. With treatment rooms full of patients, we talked. He gave Jill and me as much time as we needed to get our heads around the fact that some drugging, some cutting, some irradiating or some other, yet unknown medical torture, was about to visited onto our family in general and onto me specifically. He gave us time to see this new challenge from every angle while we were still in the room with him and able to ask questions of the leader of our medical dream team.

Dr. Pippas said he thought surgery was my best option. “Local disease requires a local treatment. Systemic disease requires systemic treatment,” Andy would always say. So we planned to scan again in five weeks time to see if the tumor was moving fast or hanging back, growing slowly like my disease has pretty much always done. We left his office feeling like a surgery to take out the adrenal gland would be a piece of cake. Probably a robotic, laparoscopic kind of thing that I would get over quickly and get behind me.

I made a decision to consult with Dr. Andy Roddenberry at St. Francis Hospital. He is a young surgeon. Full of promise and not full of himself, which made me instantly like him. I wasn’t real thrilled with what he told me, though. Dr. Roddenberry is a skilled surgeon and after a good bit of discussion, he concluded that if we wanted him to perform the surgery, he would begin the procedure hoping for a minimally invasive operation, but we needed to know the surgery would likely not be able to be completed that way.

There is considerable scar tissue left over from the massive nephrectomy that cost me my left kidney, twelve lymph nodes and a lot of digging around looking for cancer. Additionally, the organs in my body have recognized that there is some stuff missing now that used to be there and they’ve wiggled around and taken up that space in my abdomen. So, scarring, colon, pancreas and a mass of arteries and veins are all congregated in that area, as well as a vascular renal cell tumor that is very much like a 2cm bubble of blood inside the thinnest tissue paper you can imagine. The surgery has been described to me like a person trying to pick up a balloon full of blood with razor sharp pins. One prick of that bubble and I’ve got cancer cells released all over my body and my prognosis suddenly would take a big turn for the worse.

That surgery, if it turned into an open procedure, would land me five to six days in the hospital and would require about a six-week recovery. UGH! I’ve been doing research. Asking questions of people I felt might have answers. We have been fearful of a surgical option because of my weakened immune system. Andy Roddenberry explained the concerns of surgery with a weak immune system better than I have ever heard it explained.

I know this post is getting long, but I’m on a roll now and you can just close your tablet and go to bed if you’re tired of me.

Here’s what Andy Roddenberry said. “Chances are that you have small clumps of cancer cells in other places in your body. Your immune system is standing guard over them and keeping them in check. Then, you get a big 10″ incision across your belly and suddenly those immune system guard cells leave their post and race over to the site of the incision to help your body heal. The cancer cells are left alone and they have the chance to begin to grow unchecked.” That makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. Suddenly, surgery isn’t such an elegant solution to my problem.

A couple of weeks after our meeting with Andy Roddenberry, I got a call from a radiologist friend of mine who suggested that we take a look at microwave ablation as a course of action. We met with a young interventional radiologist at Midtown Medical Center named Dr. Nishant deQuadros. Much like Dr. Roddenberry, Dr. deQuadros took us through our options in a calm, thorough discussion. We left his office feeling good about him and interested in the possibility of a minimally invasive option to remove this tumor.

In the meantime, last Friday I got a phone call from Dr. Pippas. He wanted to discuss our last office visit and his comments about surgery being my best option. After a great deal of thought, he said he wanted me to look at another option than surgery. He felt surgery would be better left as a next step, after a less invasive attempt to remove the lesion.

So, we’ve listened to all of these experts and have come to a decision. We’ve made plans to go the microwave ablation route this coming Thursday, August 28. The plan is for me to spend one day in the hospital and if all goes well, I’ll be back at work on Monday, September 2. I’m nervous, not so much about the procedure, but that this disease might be about to kick it up a notch. I have enjoyed these last eight months and I want to keep living just like that — free.

So, don’t give up on me. Keep the prayers coming and pray that the microwave ablation is a success and that it kills the only remaining disease within my body.

Now, let’s go kick cancer’s ass for the seventh time!

1) nephrectomy, 2) metastasis in spine, 3) radiosurgery in spine, 4) metastasis in spine #2, 5) radiosurgery in spine #2, 6) chemotherapy, 7) microwave ablation

 

Scanxiety

We leave tomorrow morning for a quick trip to Emory for a follow up on my radiosurgery with Dr. Liza Stapleford. I had an MRI without contrast media last week. Since Dr. Pippas ordered the MRI, he’ll have to give the OK for the radiology department at The Medical Center to release a disk containing the scans for us to take to Atlanta. What I’m hoping we get is a brief report that all is well and that the stereotactic radiosurgery did what it was supposed to do. If I get my best birthday wish, she’ll say that the tumor is dead, that she doesn’t see any more problem areas and that the hole left in my spinal vertebra will heal with time without any structural issues.

My kidney cancer friends call these days scanxiety days. I know why. Despite the Christmas, New Year and birthday holidays, I have been doing a pretty good job of pushing the worry back. With an answer coming tomorrow, tonight will be a different story.

Now, before any of you who I have recently drunk dialed get excited, there will be no Xanax on this trip. So, Joe McClure in particular, I won’t be calling you to grill you on any of the lyrics to songs you’ve written. Rusty Scoven, I won’t be called you to talk about pineapples and, Michael Venable, I won’t be asking you to bring me any cupcakes. I’m hoping this is just a short trip to Atlanta to have a chat with a cute radiation oncologist. I will be blogging again tomorrow and I hope I’ll be telling some good news.

2011, don’t let me down!

Like Water From Another Time

The past couple of days have been interesting. This is the 5th day since my Thursday dose of Xanax and I am finally starting to feel human again. It is difficult to put into words how I’ve felt. Let’s just say that the dips of the cancer roller coaster ride that foster isolation for the patient are made more palpable with the addition of medically-induced fuzziness. I have told several people that I’ve felt “not right in my head” over the days since my last Thursday radiosurgery. This morning, I’m starting to feel like my old self. I just wish it could be the old self without cancer.

Last night I met with the planning team for the 2011 American Cancer Society Crystal Ball. I’m the honoree and with all the goings on in our lives over the past 15 weeks, I haven’t been much help to this wonderful group of people. Being able to sit and talk last night and see all the good work that is being done in my name for the benefit of the ACS was good medicine for me. I left there, still in my Xanax funk, but uplifted at the same time.

Last night I learned about someone’s friend who has had recent RCC surgery and has already had a return of his cancer. Another friend of mine has contacted me in the past few days to tell me about a friend of her’s who is facing upcoming RCC surgery. I have made myself available to talk to these folks to do what I can to shed some light on their upcoming days. I hope they’ll get in touch with me. It seems to help me to be able to help someone else.

Cancer creates families. Like a group of people struggling to keep their heads above the water during a tsunami, the members of this family are thrown together, bounced apart and pitched back into each others’ faces while we all ride the peaks and valleys in our own time. Quite together and quite apart. Lives moving to different beats, but somehow not quite in tune with the world around us.

Back From the Snake Pit

I spent about an hour last night talking to Jill about some of the hilarious antics I’ve displayed since Wednesday. I have an almost holy respect right now for the drug Xanax simply because of its ability to render me completely free of anxiety during these highly confining procedures I’ve had to have with my kidney cancer. I took 1.5 mg on Wednesday morning on the way to Atlanta and another .5 mg 30 minutes before the shrink wrap test run. Then I did the same thing the next day for the actual radiosurgery. That’s it!

What I have found out it that those eight half-milligram orange pills have cost me large chunks of two days of my life and I’m not sure I’ve completely gotten back to my new normal yet. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I went on a writing spree and posted the largest single post I’ve ever penned when we returned home on Friday night.

The other scary thing for me is that I spent quite a bit of time with Jill, two of my sons and one of my oldest and best friends, Richard Barrett, who drove to Atlanta from Greenville, SC to visit with me. If these stories Jill told me last night are true, then I may have some damage control to administer. I don’t remember much about Wednesday, Thursday or Friday and I’m finding out that I’ve said and done some crazy things during my 3-day Xanax fog.

A former boss of mine, Keith Murray, from during my Wichita days sent me a fatherly warning on facebook several days ago about Xanax. I guess he has, as have you, read so many snippets of how I’ve extolled the qualities of the drug over the last few days that he wanted to warn me to be cautious. Apparently he has a friend who got in trouble with the drug and he wanted me to be on guard.

I can’t wait to have a phone conversation with my sons, Michael and Adam, and my friend Richard just to see what I said to them. I really don’t have any idea about what Richard and I talked about for at least 2 hours on Wednesday (or it could have been Thursday) afternoon. Jill has told me that I turned into a six-year-old boy on the way home from the hospital on Thursday and that I reached for the door handle of the car while we were in traffic because I spotted a bakery that I wanted to go to for cupcakes. I don’t even normally eat cupcakes, but I managed to get Jill and my son, Michael, to bring me cupcakes to our hotel room on two different occasions while we were in Atlanta!

I write when the spirit hits me. If I’m not feeling it, I can’t write. I have found that my passion for writing and expression have been healthily fueled over the past few days while I’ve been under the Xanax influence. Last night, I realized that I had been sitting in my chair in front of the fireplace with my laptop perched on my knees for an embarrassingly long period of time. I’ve been so consumed with communicating with people via my blog and through emails and facebook that I really had just freaking zoned out.

During my double-digit-hour computer freak out yesterday, I watched a football game, a swamp logging show, 30 seconds of Lawrence Welk (for which I’ve been chided by Jesse Deese) and a movie that definitely made my condition worse. It was a B&W film called “The Snake Pit” where a woman goes crazy and is institutionalized for several years and it subjected to electroshock therapy. I damn sure didn’t need to see that!

But, here I am again, pounding on these keys. I had decided that I would attempt to post every day during the month of December. That is not going to happen. I’ll have to be sent off somewhere like the snake pit if I do that. Serious blogging about such an important issue as cancer is just too intense an experience to sustain over that kind of period. This blog, for me now — at least for a while — is intended to give people a glimpse into what cancer can do not only to your body, but your mind. The physical, emotional and financial fallout of this disease is simply staggering. It changes you in so many ways.

I am so thankful to have had my Jill by my side for these last few days. I have needed a caretaker, without a doubt, and she is the most patient, thoughtful, long-suffering woman on this earth. Oh what a lucky man I am to have such a beautiful, kind mate. If I make it through this alive and in one mental piece, she is going have a serious balance in my payback account.

Thankfully, I’ll be leaving soon to go to St. Matthews in-the-Pines Episcopal church. I plan to spend some time on my knees this morning giving thanks to my God for my wife, my family, my life, my friends, my doctors, my colleagues and those who I have verbally persecuted over the past few days. If you are one of the persecuted ones, I don’t remember giving you hell. I’m blaming it completely on the Xanax, which is safely tucked into that place where I keep my drugs, ready to be used again if I need it.

Here’s an update on my spine. On Wednesday, before the radiosurgery, I had constant back pain in certain positions. After the therapy, that pain is gone. Instantly gone, from whatever was done to my back. It didn’t burn. I wasn’t cut and I walked away from the table (although I have no memory of the ride home) after lying there for only an hour. Thank you, Dr. Liza Jane Stapleford! Hell, I probably said some things to her that I’ll have to apologize for, too.

I’m back, world! Thanks be to God!

Shrink Wrap, Shmink Wrap

This day was not so bad. I had 2 mg of Xanax in my system when it came time for my shrink wrapping test run. I really wouldn’t have cared if they had told me they wanted to stick me in the eye with a used corn dog stick that someone had picked out of the sawdust on an old fairground. I’ll do a better job of describing what will go on tomorrow during the actual radiosurgery.

But for now, I’ve completely swallowed my pride and have decided to show you a video of the shrink wrapping test run.

Click here to see the dry run: Radiation Shrink Wrapping

I intend to make tomorrow’s radiation treatment my bitch!